All high school classes will be cancelled on Wednesday if local teachers walk the picket lines as planned.

The Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF), the union representing secondary teachers across the province, is planning a one-day strike if it is unable to reach a deal in its ongoing negotiations with the province before Wednesday.

All secondary schools in the Upper Canada District School Board – along with Académie catholique Ange-Gabriel, Brockville’s French Catholic K-12 school – will be affected in the event of a strike.

“If (a walkout) occurs, there will be no classes, planned activities, co-operative education placements or extracurriculars for students in Grades 9 to 12 on Wednesday, December 4,” the public school board said in a release.

High school students will be the only ones affected at the public board and schools will remain open for students in other grades.

“At this time, all classes will resume as normal for students in Kindergarten to Grade 8.”

Community use programs and childcare operations based in these public schools will not be affected either, the board confirmed.

Brockville’s Académie catholique Ange-Gabriel says it will suspend all classes on Wednesday.

“This measure is put in place because the number of staff would be insufficient to fully ensure student safety,” board director Réjean Sirois said in a French-language message to parents.

Before and after-school care will not be available to school-aged children, they said, and they are encouraging parents to find alternative childcare.

The Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario will not be affected by this strike as that board’s secondary school employees are represented by the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association.

The one-day strike will follow six days of information pickets and a limited withdrawal of administrative services that began Nov. 26. The union’s negotiations with the province have been ongoing for eight months and the two sides again failed to come to an agreement over the weekend.

When the work-to-rule strike action began last Tuesday, the union made it a priority to minimize disruption to students. But now, after a week of work action it claims is having no impact on the negotiations, it says it has no choice but to escalate the job action.

“This one-day, full withdrawal of services will cause a short-term disruption for our students, but if we allow this government to continue down the path it is on, students will suffer the negative impacts for years to come,” Harvey Bischof, president of the OSSTF, said in a letter to members.

Locally, OSSTF District 26 represents over 600 contract teachers, over 200 occasional teachers, and over 20 professional staff.

Some of the main issues concerning the union include class sizes, staffing, and mandatory online learning.

“The Minister of Education and his bargaining teams at both the education worker and teacher/occasional teacher central tables continue to avoid meaningful progress on the issues that are crucial to a high quality learning environment for our students, and fair working conditions for our members,” the letter continued.

Education Minister Stephen Lecce said the province has been working to reach a deal that “keeps students in class” by making “major moves that have not been matched or reciprocated by the teachers’ unions.”

“For teacher unions to leave the table, to turn their back on our children, and to escalate to the point of compromising their education, is deeply troubling for parents and our government,” he said in a statement.

“In fact, on the days we made reasonable offers – reducing class room sizes from 28 to 25 and reducing online learning courses from four to two – the unions decided to escalate. This is wrong, and our students deserve better.”

But OSSTF says the proposal to reduce class sizes from 28 to 25 is misleading, as it still represents an increase from the current average of 22.

Elementary teachers are also in the midst of a work-to-rule job action where they have withdrawn several administrative job duties, including responding to emails from the school board, working on report cards, and attending staff meetings.

Some of the key issues causing an impasse between the two sides, according to the union, include supports for special education, growing class sizes and structure, fair and transparent hiring practices, and preservation of the current kindergarten program.

In Leeds and Grenville, the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario ETFO represents 1,150 teachers at the UCDSB.